Archive for November, 2016

I enjoyed my early childhood days in Pennsyltucky. My Mom and Dad used that word all the time to describe where we were from. If you’ve never been through the forested rolling hills of Pennsylvania, enjoyed collecting and jumping in the Fall leaves, hunted for sassafras roots to munch, a genuine earthy place, well, you should give it a go sometime. Some great historical sites, too, by the way.

Pennsyltucky is the “T” in Pennsylvania. Picture the rectangular state. In the lower right corner is a Philadelphia box. In the lower left (roughly) is the Pittsburgh (with an “h”) box. Both areas trend left. What remains is the “T”, the central band running from top to bottom and another band across the top. You might call this rural Pennsylvania. It’s the conservative Pennsylvania. It’s where my grandmother lived her entire 101-year life, in the same house since married, in Shamokin, PA. As my Mom would often mention to us kids learning to spell, “that’s Nikomahs spelled backward.” Reynoldsville. (By way of) Paxinas. Our last home in Pennsyltucky before leaving for Kansas was in Butler, an hour north of Pittsburgh. Not a long drive, but it was enough to shift political leanings from the left in Pittsburgh to the right in the “T”, Pennsyltucky. I always thought my parents were Republicans, and I actually think they were registered that way, but they definitely leaned more and more left as time passed (or at least that was my perception). Maybe they’d have stayed more “right” had we stayed in Pennsyltucky.

Until this morning, I didn’t know that Pennsyltucky is/was used to (often jokingly) refer to this “T”/rural/conservative area of PA. It was just where we were from, and I half-thought Mom and Dad coined the name somehow. I’m feeling oddly proud of that heritage today.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. Being in California, I had the luxury of using my vote in a totally principled fashion without worrying about affecting the outcome. CA was going blue no matter what.

If lies were dynamite, the top two candidates for President would have been blown to kingdom come long ago.

This was one obvious point in an interesting article by Susan Wright on RedState.com. The title is “How Do We Vote The Bible?”. It runs down the Ten Commandments and “rates” each of the Donald and Hillary one by one. It’s about as bad as you might expect, though there are some landmines neither has really stepped on yet (or at least not very publicly).

But who is so old-fashioned to use the Ten Commandments as a measuring stick?! I am. And I don’t care what religion you are, or even if you’re religious at all. It would be pretty hard to beat this list as a “rules to live by as a good person” – no matter your world view.

So check it out. And if you’re really brave, take stock of how you’re doing as well.

Mickey White (at RedState.com) suggested #NeverAgain be a battle cry we can ALL get behind. We should ALL get behind. Eighty-plus percent of us are going to vote for a blustery amoral slimebag of a man or one of the most corrupt politicians of our time. THAT is despicable.

Watch out. The lame ducks in the Senate (led by Mitch McConnel) seem to be planning to put through the Marketplace Fairness Act after the election. Sounds good, right? Who could possibly oppose marketplace fairness?! Be ye not fooled. Like lots of crap coming from DC, the gotchyas are under the hood. In this case, what is meant by fairness is that internet retailers will have to collect and pay sales tax to all the states from which their customers come.

There is no pot of money that will remain untaxed when a leviathan government is out of control.

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Analogies. Principles. Truisms. Character Traits. Logic. Probably others will get thrown in over time. I find that these "techniques" provide handles to understanding or "seeing" otherwise confusing or conflicting messages. With any luck, clarity of thought can be encouraged using these ways to look at things.. And sometimes I may just throw something else, randomly, into the mix. Thank you for taking a Look At It This Way!